gender identity

I’m very excited to see Disney’s new Live-Action Beauty and the Beast, and not just because it was my favorite animated Disney movie growing up. Allow me to explain:

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The girl who takes my fast-food order has conspicuous miniature band-aids over her dimples, raised away from the skin by the dermal jewelry they cover. Her nose has a hole with no stud. Her cuticles are stained black where the nail-polish remover didn’t penetrate. She smiles brightly, her extended hand holding my change, each finger sporting a ring.

The retail worker who helps answer my questions about pre-order bonuses for Mass Effect Andromeda has long-sleeves on. When he reaches for a top shelf, his right sleeve pulls back. His arm is covered in vivid scales, the sweep of a Koi-fish revealed for just a moment before he tugs the sleeve of his shirt back into place. I’ve seen work like that before, hundreds of dollars and hours spent under the needle. The lanyard that holds his name badge has a pin with koi-fish in swirling water.

My friend meets me for coffee. She’s changed her hair since the last time I saw her. The hot pink streaks in her blonde hair have been covered over with a chocolate brown that matches her roots but make her look pale and tired. The medical monopoly that runs all the hospitals in the area insists that their nurses have “natural” hair colors. Her fingernails where she holds her Cappuccino are bright pink.

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Particular ways of seeing, or rather, not seeing, manifest themselves with vehemence in Toledo, Ohio. All of these moments, instances that wouldn’t have fazed me before I lived in Syracuse, now strike with precise and disquieting force as I visit my hometown during spring break week. A few hours away, in New York, these bodies are allowed to exist in the public spaces. The waitstaff and retail workers sport tattoos and piercings and bright hair colors. They paint their faces with startling hues and ornament their unique bodies. Non-normative people exist, and insist on their existence in public spaces. I’ve only been gone from Toledo since August, but it was a shock to the system to return.

It is a particular brand of cognitive dissonance that maintains the normative through the repression of non-normative bodies. It maintains equilibrium by enforcing blindspots through the control of Capitalist structures. These young people working in food services and retail, these thirty-somethings serving in the medical field, all need these jobs in order to survive. Yet, these jobs act as a powerful normalizing force against them. Keep your piercings out or you can’t take burger orders. Cover your tattoos or you can’t answers questions about video games. Dye your vibrant hair a “natural” color or you can’t possibly administer life-saving medication and care. Remain “professional.”

The Midwestern “normal” functions through the creation and maintenance of purposeful blindspots that deny the existence of alternative forms of expression. “Blindspots” only remain viable so long as non-normative bodies are forced into invisibility and silence. This silence does not actually remove their existence, but instead denies them space within the discourse of normality. If piercings must be removed, tattoos covered, and hair dyed, then alternative modes of self-expression will continue to be absent from professional settings. These alternative bodies must find voice on the fringes or not be voiced at all, relegated to the silences within discourse that Michel Foucault describes in his History of Sexuality.

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My reflections on queer existence in our present political moment from my post last week (which you can read here: https://metathesisblog.com/2017/03/10/facebook-and-uncanny-identity/) no doubt primed me for noticing these “blindspots” during my trip home (in fact, the use of body modification by the queer community for self-expression makes this censorship of non-normative bodies all the more relevant for me, see Victoria Pitts’ article “Visibly Queer: Body Technologies and Sexual Policies” in The Sociological Quarterly). It was actually discouraging to see the ways that these non-normative forms of self-expression were being systematically crushed by structures within Capitalism. I recognize that this happens in the back of my mind constantly, but seeing it physically manifested in front of me was difficult.

Cue Disney’s new release of Beauty and the Beast. The Internet has been all atwitter since the announcement a few weeks ago that the character of LeFou, Gaston’s sidekick, will be portrayed as openly gay. First came the initial excitement over representation of an LGBTQIA+ character by a major motion picture. Then came fear about what that representation might look like (yet another queer villain, a gay man who is uncomfortable with his own sexuality, etc.). Regardless of the problems that may arise surrounding this character, it is the first openly gay character that Disney has put in one of their films, a historic moment of representation.

Not long after this announcement, demands for censorship started to roll in, the carefully crafted mode of cognitive dissonance deeply disturbed by representations of a gay man in a film about a love story between a beast-animal creature and a young woman. It is impossible for queer and non-normative bodies to remain invisible and non-existent in the minds of the majority if their entertainment represents these lives. In order to maintain this normative silence, LeFou had to go.

For a moment, my heart sank. After all, this is the same company that changed a male Tibetan character into a white Celtic woman in order to maintain profits for Doctor Strange abroad. The power of Capitalism over the film industry functions powerfully to reinforce hegemonic ideals of the normal within their representations. I thoroughly expected to start reading reports of censorship by Disney of LeFou and the films touted “gay scene” in order to maintain their profits. That was why it was such a joy to see this article (http://www.nbc26.com/news/national/disney-delays-release-of-beauty-and-the-beast-in-malaysia-after-gay-moment-cut-from-film) from NBC, stating that Disney will not remove the scene from the film even if it costs them profits. In fact, the company has chosen to pull the film from Malaysian theatres rather than remove LeFou or his scenes.

By no means is this an ultimate victory or a complete solution. Often, these systems are so powerful and deeply entrenched that it doesn’t seem that there will ever be hope for representation for non-normative bodies and identities in our mainstream culture. Yet, this film is a moment of encouragement, a bright spot, further proof that systems can be changed over time. The service industry workers in New York can have further autonomy over their modes of identity constructions. They can have bright green hair, and septum piercings, and chest tattoos, and LeFou can be hot for Gaston.

Hillarie ‘Rhyse’ Curtis is a Ph.D. student at Syracuse University where she studies (and occasionally writes about) queer narratives, masculinity, trauma, war, and fan fiction, among other things.